After being sold by the Lithuanian Post to a business school, the building in central Vilnius has been equipped with lecture halls, reading rooms, and libraries.
The handsome neo-Romanesque building on Vilnius central Gedimino Avenue housed the Central Post Office for half a century, before being sold to the ISM University of Management and Economics.
Following several years of renovation, the building has been equipped with auditoriums, an amphitheatre for university events and conferences, a library, student collaboration and leisure spaces, modern meeting rooms. The roof of the building features a spacious terrace with a spectacular view of Vilnius Old Town and Gediminas Castle.
Architects Aurimas Sasnauskas, Radvilė Samackaitė, Sla Malenko and Diana Sabaliauskienė, the project manager of the renovation and architectural part of the project, took pains to preserve the valuable parts of the building – which include original historicist elements and mid-century additions – while adapting it to new functions.
“We tried to preserve the space of the main lobby, its characteristic and valuable elements: the chandeliers, the impressive original clock, the old mailboxes, the plasterboard ceilings, the wooden showcases,” Sasnauskas was quoted in a press release by the ISM.
The building on 7 Gedimino Avenue was constructed in 1886 and housed a bank. In the 1960s, it was converted into the Central Post Office.
The conversion, overseen by the brother architects Algimantas and Vytautas Nasvytis, expanded the building three times, giving it a spacious modern lobby behind the neo-Romanesque façade.
The Nasvytis brothers are known for the designing many modern icons of Vilnius: the Neringa Café, the Hotel Lietuva, the National Drama Theatre, and the parliament building.
Newsletter
Every Friday morning.
